On December 20, 2023, the severe cold that spread across the country invaded Chengdu, the country of abundance, and we walked into Du Fu's thatched cottage with reverence to worship this poet saint of the Tang Dynasty. Du Fu's thatched cottage with green autumn colors is a good feng shui treasure.
Du Fu Thatched Cottage, the former residence of the great poet Du Fu in the Tang Dynasty, is located at No. 37, Qinghua Road, Qingyang District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Du Fu lived here for nearly four years and wrote more than 240 poems. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the poet Wei Zhuang found the ruins of the thatched cottage and rebuilt the thatched hut to preserve it, and the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties repaired and expanded.
Du Fu Thatched Cottage covers an area of nearly 300 acres, still intact retains the architectural pattern of the 13th year of Ming Hongzhi (1500) and the 16th year of Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty (1811) when it was repaired and expanded. There are more than 30,000 volumes of various materials in the thatched cottage, and the Du Fu Memorial Hall was established in 1955, and it was renamed the Chengdu Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in 1985.
The word "grass hall" on the plaque at the main entrance of Du Fu's thatched cottage in Chengdu was written by Prince Guo, the seventeenth son of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, Aixin Jueluo Yunli. The Poetry and History Hall is the central building of Du Fu's thatched cottage monumental ancestral hall. In the middle of the poetry history hall is the statue of Du Fu sculpted by the sculptor Liu Kaiqu, and the hall displays the couplets and plaques inscribed by celebrities of the past dynasties. The Ministry of Industry Ancestral Hall, because Du Fu had been as a staff member of the Ministry of Labor, so it was called the Du Ministry of Industry, and the temple was named after it. The ancestral hall has one house and three wings, the mountain is closed and the pillars are bright, the stone steps are high, and the windows are grilled. There are two stone carvings of Du Fu in the Ming and Qing dynasties in the ancestral hall, among which the stone carving of Du Fu in the 30th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1602) is the earliest stone carving statue of the thatched cottage. In the Qing Dynasty, Huang Tingjian and Lu You were enshrined on both sides of the statue of Du Fu, so it was also called Sanxian Hall. There is a joint language in the hall of "the barren river knots the house for thousands of years, and the two sages of the Song Dynasty are promoted to the hall by different generations". The wall is also embedded with the Qing Dynasty Qianlong, Jiaqing period stone carving "Shaoling thatched cottage map", the carving is fine, after liberation, it is according to this map to restore the old appearance of the thatched cottage. There is a portrait of Du Fu enshrined in the temple of the Ministry of Industry, and there are poets Huang Tingjian and Lu You who once lived in Shu. The east side of the Ministry of Industry Ancestral Hall is the stele pavilion of "Shaoling Thatched Cottage", symbolizing Du Fu's thatched house, "Shaoling" is the name of the place, the tomb of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty is called "Du Ling", the tomb of Emperor Xuan is called "Shaoling" because the scale is smaller than the emperor's tomb. Du Fu lived here for a long time, and in his poems he once called himself "Du Ling Ye Lao" and "Shaoling Ye Ke", so he called him "Du Shaoling".
Du Fu's thatched cottage has been repaired and expanded in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and has evolved into a famous cultural holy place integrating the pattern of the memorial ancestral hall and the style of the poet's former residence, with simple and elegant architecture and quiet and beautiful gardens. The thatched cottage completely retains the pattern of the reconstruction of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, and is a unique "mixed" Chinese classical garden.
Du Fu's thatched cottage also has a quaint and unique "thatched cottage" shadow wall inlaid by broken porcelain and shaded by red walls and bamboo.
An attraction of a lifetime